Wilmington firefighters to check every building

Wilmington firefighters are walking street by street to document safety issues with vacant properties along with residential and commercial to help emergency workers with safer outcomes while on the scene.
Jennifer Corbett/The News Journal

Buy Photo

Capt. Demetrius Todd (left) and firefighter James Johnson of the Wilmington Fire Department make note of safety issues at a vacant property on Washington Street.(Photo: Jennifer Corbett, The News Journal)Buy Photo

Fortunately, the Fire Department was familiar with the building and its risks. Firefighters had visited the store two weeks earlier and knew that the boxes, clothes and petroleum-based rubber sneakers created a severe fire risk. Knowing that "fire load" and that the front wall was weakened from a renovation, Fire Chief Michael Donohue ordered firefighters to stay out of the building.

"I knew that building," he said. "Due to the smoke conditions and the fire load, I called for a defensive attack."

Knowing as much as possible about a building – its sprinkler system, its layout, whether it contains hazardous materials – is helpful for firefighters making critical split-second decisions, fire officials said, and it could potentially save lives.

For that reason, Wilmington firefighters are spending hours every week walking the city streets.

They're identifying vacant properties, making note of hazards like blocked exits, checking inspection statuses of commercial properties and sharing information with the Fire Marshall's Office and the Licenses and Inspections Department.

"When this is done, every street in this whole city will have been walked," Donohue said.

Buy Photo

Firefighters Hiram Whatley (left) and James Johnson (center) walk down the 500 block of West Seventh Street with Capt. Demetrius Todd with the Wilmington Fire Department checking for vacant properties.(Photo: Jennifer Corbett, The News Journal)

The survey program, started in February, intends to compile information about the city's building stock to better inform firefighting strategies during emergencies and to help enforce safety regulations. So far, firefighters have identified 400 properties that were not in the city's inspection system but should be.

"The hazards, the good, the bad and the ugly, we want to know," Donohue said. "It will help us effectively combat a fire, and it may help us prevent a fire."

Canvassing the entire city could take a year, but officials said it will give them essential information.

"A building may look great in the front, but in the back, it’s collapsed," Donohue said. "When we drive down the street in a fire truck, we see the front, and it looks good."

Making sure buildings are up to date on inspections is important for firefighter and building occupant safety, Lt. Gabriel Pabon said.

"When our guys are fighting a fire on the sixth floor of a vacant mid-rise building, we want to know when they hook up to the standpipe to get water to the sixth floor that the standpipe is not compromised on the fourth floor," he said. "That's what this is about."

As part of the new program, firefighters also will make note of businesses that have changed occupancies. (A delicatessen could have different fire risks from a hair salon, Donohue said.) Officials will also, for the first time, start inspecting small, home-based day cares of six children or less, Donohue said.

With the new data, dispatchers will radio property information to firefighters on their way to calls.

"You may hear them say, 'Use caution when responding,' or 'Make access from the rear of the building,'" said Fire Capt. Demetrius Todd.

Firefighters are not inspecting the interiors of residential properties – it's not permitted by city code, officials said. For that reason, firefighters will still find themselves entering the unknown. If it were in place last year, the survey program may not have prevented the deaths of three firefighters who responded to a rowhome fire on Sept. 24. In that incident, which is still under investigation by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the floor collapsed.

Still, useful information can be gathered from examining the outside of buildings.

Buy Photo

Firefighter James Johnson with the Wilmington Fire Department looks through a window of a vacant property along Washington Street.(Photo: Jennifer Corbett, The News Journal)

On Tuesday, firefighters strolled the 500 block of W. Seventh Street in West Center City. Walking to the back of one vacant home, they discovered boards and bricks closing exits in the back of the building. One door on the second floor apparently used to open onto a fire escape, but it's no longer there. For a firefighter, that's a major concern, Todd said.

"Here you open that door, you’ve never been in there, it's smoky, you think you’re going into a room, and you’re going to fall and land on bricks."

Property owners not in compliance with permit and inspection requirements could face penalties and will need to take action, said Leo Lynch, acting commissioner of Licenses and Inspections.